


In the Bleak Midsummer

by The_Dancing_Walrus, The_Librarian



Series: Geniuses and Madmen [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Detective Comics, For Science!, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Strange Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-09 11:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12275811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Librarian/pseuds/The_Librarian
Summary: Summer scorcher! Gotham swelters in the heat but someone is determined to visit cold fury on the city. Sounds like a case for everyone's favourite billionaire superhero – the Invincible Iron Man! Meanwhile, a vengeful computer programmer is about to find himself thrust into the world of that sinister vigilante known only as 'the Batman' . . .





	1. Issue 1

**Author's Note:**

> * This is all [DragonTail's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonTail) fault. We were over in Australia and we foolishly took up the challenge DT posed of writing a story where you take one Marvel superhero and one DC superhero and put them in a world where they are the only two superheroes. So, for example, you could take Hal Jordan and Carol Danvers and have a Green Lantern/Captain Marvel Air Force mash-up where the Kree take the Reach's place as That One Species that the GL Corps really can't stand.  
> * But we didn't want to do that.  
> * So instead, we chose to start with comicbooks' two premier billionaire playboy philanthropists in silly costumes.  
> * In case it is not obvious, this is a collaborative work. Blame is shared equally.

“ _It looks like the Snowman Gang has struck again. In the early hours of this morning, the HammerTech development lab here in Otisburg was invaded by armed men who apparently_ froze _cameras and security doors solid before smashing their way inside. At the height of one of the hottest summers on records, police officers found the building covered in_ ice _. This is the fourth such raid this month on the company's Gotham facilities and it appears increased security has not deterred the thieves._

_Several security guards are reported to have been taken to Elliot Memorial Hospital suffering from frostbite. There is no word yet on whether the witnesses can shed any light on the motive behind these attacks. HammerTech CEO Justin Hammer was not available to comment this morning but his office has issued a statement saying there are no plans to cancel this evening's Gala Dinner. This is Summer Gleeson for Gotham City News, returning you to the studio.”_

  
  


* * *

 

He takes the Sypder to the Gala. It's not to be flashy. There can't be anyone in Gotham who hasn't seen the tabloid snaps of him driving it before and he doubts that Justin Hammer has ever given a damn about other people's cars in his life. No, it's just that it’s hot as hell and the Sypder's open top means he doesn't have to resort to air-con to stop himself baking to the seat.

Even so, he spends half the trip imagining the press reaction to 'Tony Stark tips a champagne chiller over his head the moment he arrives.' The other half, he spends wondering exactly what colour Hammer will go when he finds out Tony's actually accepted his invitation for once.

The annual HammerTech Gala Dinner and Dance is one of those stuffy, everyone-who's-anyone things that's been in the social calendar forever. Like the Wayne summer parties of old, it’s officially a charity affair, with people paying more than most people earn in a year to stand around all evening feeling virtuous. Tony's always been a bit dubious about where the money actually ends up though. Whatever else you could say about Justin Hammer, he's definitely not someone known for his generosity.

It would be nice to be able to say that's why Tony's always snubbed the Gala before. And maybe for the last couple of years, that's actually been kind of true. But honestly, the real reason is that it's the most boring social event ever imagined. A bunch of old, rich people talking about their investments and the size of the trust funds they're leaving their kids – it's deathly in oh so very many senses of the word. The liveliest it ever gets is when the band strikes up a slightly fast waltz. Old Money just isn't any fun and if Tony's going to party, he demands fun at the very least.

Still, with any luck, this year he can bring along a little excitement of his own.

“You ready to strut your stuff, JARVIS?” he asks as he takes the turn off the expressway that'll carry him down to the HammerTech headquarters.

“ _Raring to go, sir,”_ says the voice in his earpiece. JARVIS sounds especially droll today and Tony wonders if that's because he's looking forward to the challenge, or just the opposite.

“You'll do fine. It's just Hammer's corporate mainframe. How hard can it be to hack?”

“ _I'm sure you're right, sir. Doing it unobserved in a building full of people during an event in which you are expected to be engaging in conversation, however, might be a little trickier.”_

“Eh, everyone needs to use the bathroom sometime. And people can easily get lost in a big building like that.”

“ _I look forward to hearing you explain that to Mr Hammer's security staff, sir. They are no doubt going to be rather more on edge than usual.”_

Tony makes a face. If they aren't, then they haven't been paying attention to the news. Four of Hammer's R&D facilities broken open like cheap piggy-banks and an ice-ray used every time. That's going to have everyone at HammerTech on edge. Normally, Tony would have left that kind of thing entirely in the hands of Gordon's brave boys in blue. It _is_ Hammer and if he was on fire, Tony would have had to think very seriously about loaning him a glass of water. But ice-ray. Ice. Ray. Or cold gun or cryo-engine or some other kind of ridiculously cool thermodynamics-defying device. Heh. Cool.

He _needs_ to know what is up with that and so he, reluctantly, actually called up to ask if maybe the Iron Man could be of any assistance.

Justin thanked him for his generous offer and ever so politely declined, saying that it was a matter for the police and for HammerTech itself, not some jumped-up little grease monkey in a metal suit. OK, so Tony is adding the last bit in his head but there is something insufferably patronising about Hammer and isn’t it a bit suspicious that he'd turn down help from the world's only living superhero to deal with a criminal who is breaking the laws of physics as well as, you know, actual laws?

So Tony’s decided to take matters into his own hands. If Justin isn't going to tell him what the deal is, he's just going to have to go in and look through Justin's computers until he finds out what Justin knows. Too many people have been hurt already to worry about business secrets. Honestly, he's doing Justin a favour, saving him the bother of swallowing his damn pride and crawling to Tony for help.

He grins at the HammerTech building looming ahead of the car. It's a wall of blackened stonework, just as depressingly grey and monolithic as everything else around here. In the mirror, he can see the Stark Tower standing out proudly against the skyline, almost blindingly bright in the afternoon sun. The contrast is extremely satisfying.

“OK, JARVIS,” he mutters as they pull up at the front door, “Show-time.”

  
  


* * *

 

He _almost_ has it.

Just a _few_ more hours and he'll have a way into Hammer's automated security system. And then – _then_ – he'll be able to upload his _masterpiece_. And that glorious piece of programming will turn Hammer's entire building into one gigantic death trap!

He'll show that treacherous, backstabbing, career-ending ignoramus what happens when you mess with –

The screen swims in front of Eddie's face reminding him (not for the first time) that it is still the height of summer, that the miserable basement he's living in still doesn't have a proper window and that surrendering most of his living space to computers is not helping make the place any cooler.

Temporary set back. He'll just have a little more to drink and –

His glass is empty. His stomach rumbles and it really is an unfair distraction from the rather more important matter at hand.

Eddie doesn't have time for anything as mundane as eating and sleeping any more. Which is the dratted 'Snowman's' fault, sneaking in and attacking Hammer before Eddie's had a chance to even _try_ to tear that son of a bitch to shreds.

He knows (obviously) that it presents an _opportunity_ though he can't help feeling that choosing the hottest day of the year is bordering on a personal slight.

But the screen isn't really clearing and now that he's started _thinking about it_ Eddie's head feels like it's going to explode –

So he pushes himself up (both his feet have gone numb) and totters over to the fridge.

There are still a few bottles of water left, which is good because he doesn't want to risk tap water in Gotham. (Who on earth knows what's in it after all?) A little searching and he finds some takeaway cartons. He isn't entirely sure what. It doesn't look too bad –

And that's more than enough distraction. He needs to _focus_ if he's going to have it ready for Hammer's big Gala tonight. He needs to _work_ –

Eddie staggers back to his spot, a lone chair in the middle of a cityscape of computer cases, lit by monitors, hemmed in by whirring fans. The heat is _baking_ and he hasn't been outside in days, but he's hardly noticed.

He _almost_ has it –

  
  


* * *

 

The first familiar face Tony sees is an unexpected one. Vicky Vale swoops towards him wearing the kind of smile that promises a whole lot of nice things, all of which will find their way on to the front pages of the major news outlets before you can say court injunction.

“Now this is a surprise! Tony Stark at a party thrown by Justin Hammer. You've just made history, Tony.”

He shrugs modestly. “Making history is what I'm all about.”

“No kidding. I'd ask what changed the policy of a lifetime but I think I can probably guess. Should we expect the Iron Man to take down the Snowman tonight?”

“No comment. Anyway, it's my night off. I'm sure the police will handle it fine without me.”

“If you are, you're the only one, trust me. Come on though, you've got to have a theory. Any idea what it's all about?”

'Not yet,' he almost says but manages to catch himself. “Nope.” Time for a smooth change of topic. “But hey, how did you even get in here?” Because he likes Vicky, a lot, but it's for all the reasons Hammer wouldn't let her into his party in a million years.

She flashes him another smile and turns in a way that just happens to emphasise how well the long white dress clings to her. “I'm here as a plus-one for the old boy over there.” A plump man in a dinner suit waves pleasantly to Vicky as she points him out. “He owes me a favour and he's an absolutely sweetheart, so he got me in.”

“Smart. Is there anyone in this town you haven't got dirt on?”

“Who said anything about dirt? Let's just say it's a family matter I helped smooth over.” Her brow furrows slightly. “By the way, did Justin know you were coming?”

“I might have forgotten to RSPV. Why?”

“Because the look he’s giving you makes me think he's about to throw you out. Oh-oh. Here he comes.”

There's not quite enough crowd for it to part before Hammer but it would have done if there were. He's taller than Tony by quite a way and thin enough that it looks like he's applied the same cost-cutting methods to his body as he does to his corporation. His suit is tailored to the same perfection to which his hair has been coiffured and both look strangely fixed in place. As he approaches, he composes his face into something approaching – but not quite reaching – a welcoming expression.

“Tony,” he says in a low British purr, “What an unexpected pleasure. If I'd known you would be gracing us with your presence, I'd have made sure you were greeted properly.” A sidelong look at Vicky makes it clear he does not consider her to be a proper anything.

“I had an opening in my schedule and figured what the heck.” Tony bears his teeth. “You could probably use the moral support, right?”

Hammer's eyes harden just that little bit more. “I certainly appreciate the gesture. However, if you are expecting to have to . . . armour up and defend us all tonight, you're likely to be disappointed. I can't imagine someone whose tastes run to robbing research labs is going to find much to interest them here.”

“So they've definitely been robberies?” Vicky asks without missing a beat.

Hammer keeps his gaze pinned on Tony. “We have still not determined exactly what the intention behind the raids has been. As you can imagine, the methods used left quite a mess. But we shall get to the bottom of it all, please don't have any doubt about that.”

Tony spreads his hands. “The offer to help's still there.”

“As is my gratitude for it. Well, I shan’t detain you from enjoying the party.” Extending a hand regally, Hammer flags down a waiter to offer Tony his first glass of wine. “No doubt we will talk again later, Tony. Ms Vale.”

“That's the most drop-dead tone I've heard my name said in a while,” Viki comments quietly once Hammer is well out of ear-shot, “Bet he's already calling his lawyer.”

Tony doesn't doubt it. But he figures that Hammer's manners won't let him kick Viki out now she's in. “So . . . what're we supposed to do at a party where no one's laying down a beat and there isn't a proper bar?”

“You circulate, darling. Talk to the best people and generally schmooze like a pro.”

“I don't schmooze. It's against my religion.”

“Come on,” she laughs, taking his arm, “I've been to enough of these corpse-fests to know the ropes. I'll show you how it's done.”

  
  


* * *

 

It's unpleasant on the streets in a way the word 'hot' doesn't exactly capture. The narrowness of Gotham streets, the looming buildings, the haphazard way the whole city packs together, piling expressways and factory chimneys over cramped blocks – it all conspires to steal the vitality from the air.

That's what it feels like, standing at the bottom of a crumbling Almost-Art-Deco monstrosity: like the air's died. It doesn't even feel any cooler in the shade of an alleyway.

You don't stay out in a Gotham summer without a good reason.

After a couple of days, Jason had decided that watching Edward Nashton's flat wasn’t a particularly good reason. After five, he's starting to think reason’s maybe left for Metropolis.

He feels a little like announcing to the airwaves that nothing's happening, but then nothing's been happening for a solid week. Jason feels confident that nothing will continue to happen until the inevitable heat death of the universe.

“Nothing,” he mutters in the vague hope that speaking might at least dispel his boredom.

“ _Still?”_ Dick sounds far too chipper in Jason's burnt, sweaty ear.

It grates.

“Since Wednesday.” Jason confirms.

“ _Wow,”_ Dick says, radiating the sort of easy happiness of someone who hasn't been standing outside in the heat for most of the hottest week of the year, _“Are we sure he hasn't died?”_

“His lights are on,” Jason replies, which is half an answer.

The truth is he can't exactly see into the basement flat. Mr Nashton could have had a sudden heart attack after he got his takeaway from the door on Wednesday. But if the previous five days represent his usual pattern then he's probably just inside doing . . .

Whatever it is shut-ins do. Jason isn't precisely sure.

“ _Maybe we should call an ambulance?”_ Dick suggests lightly.

“Hey if you've got nothing better to do –”

“ _Busy!”_ Dick says brightly and Jason tells him to go fuck himself.

“ _Language Master Jason!”_ comes the automatic admonishment.

Jason groans and he would lay good money that Dick's smirking on the other end somewhere.

“Sorry Alfred.” It comes out almost as a moan.

“ _Master Jason I should not need to remind you that we are on an open channel –” Alfre_ d leaves a dangerous pause, which means he's waiting for Jason to remember –

Shit.

“Sorry Cassie!”

It always pays to apologise to Cassie, who still doesn't really talk but has never let that get in the way of showing her brothers when she's upset –

On the up side, Alfred's lecture breaks the monotony up a little.

Jason checks his watch for the millionth time. It's an hour and a half 'til Cassie relieves him and then (assuming Nashton stays as interesting as ever) Jason's up again at noon tomorrow.

'Course it'll be worth it if they catch the arsonist . . .

The news has been blaring nothing but the Snowmen for a while now. No one seems to have noticed the spate of fires across Gotham that began after the first raid. Or the way ex-Hammer employees have a habit of getting caught in the flames.

And if that means Hammer's finally getting sloppy, if that means a chance at taking down the man who's been busy making the rough side of Gotham that much rougher –

It helps a little, thinking about the bigger picture. It's what's been keeping Jason in place for days. But it's a temporary fix. He's back to glazing over in the dead air when another voice breaks on to the comms.

“ _Anything?”_

“No –” He knows he sounds bitter and of course Dad picks up on that right away.

“ _I'm on my way home,”_ he says, which is Bruce-speak for 'I've got time', _“Tell me.”_

Jason sighs. There's a young mother on the fourth floor working twelve hour shifts in one of Hammer's production lines, another industrial accident waiting to happen. There's a couple on the sixth that party hard without an obvious source of cash. There's a man on the third who's probably pretending to be a Nigerian prince and a woman on the second who keeps forgetting to leave the blinds down when she's got a weed plant in the window.

Edward Nashton with his major in computer sciences and six years working for Hammer Industries hasn't left his house in four days.

There's a thoughtful pause over the line. In the background Jason can hear the rattle of the skyrail.

“ _It sounds like you've done all you can from that end, Jason. I wonder . . . is Mr Nashton a registered voter?”_

Dick chuckles and makes a joke about the good ol' Wayne charm and Jason's willing to admit it's a good idea.

Just maybe not as good as one that would get him somewhere with an AC.

  
  


* * *

 

Somehow, Justin's contrived a way to have a cool breeze wafting across the garden so that his guests don't cook. That actually impresses Tony a little since he can't immediately work out how it's done. But then, he probably shouldn't have expected anything less from the man who arranged for a garden like this to be built in the first place.

It's at the back of the Hammer building, out through a low and modern conference wing that slopes from a modest two stories down to an artificially sculpted ground level. The garden is landscaped to give the effect of a riverside field cut into terraces and cleverly designed so that the actual Gotham river is safely hidden from view. A brilliant white awning has been stretched across the lawn to offer protection from – either the sun or the air pollution, Tony's not quite sure. A short stage for the band has been placed at the far end between the flowerbeds and they're playing background music while looking very cramped. Waiters in immaculate old-fashioned uniforms circulate to ensure that everyone is being kept well-supplied with cheap-but-no-one's-going-to-mention-it wine and the tiniest nibbles in the universe. Obtrusively unobtrusive security guards man or woman their posts at the edges of the party, on the lookout for nefarious ne’er-do-wells and anyone desperate enough to gatecrash.

Tony thinks he might be about to die of boredom. He's had to pinch himself at least three times just to stay awake and he is wishing very hard that he were in a position where making a scene would be a viable option.

He takes back everything he ever said about Gotham's ancient upper crust. They are infinitely worse than that. Stuffy, bigoted, narrow-minded and probably not a one of them capable of changing a battery, let alone understanding anything approaching modern technology. They're the kind of people who invented being fat-cats and now cling to a fading glory as tenaciously as they cling to every cent. Either that or they're old money, remorselessly contemptuous of anyone who has the audacity to have earned their fortune by actual work. It's honestly hard to say which is worse.

Viki sails through it without so much as a batted eyelash, easily charming the old dears and older boys with easy smiles and by paying close attention to whatever they are saying. If any one of them had more sense than a turkey on Thanksgiving, they'd have run a mile from that but no, they think she's delightful.

Tony wants to throw his drink over someone. Possibly hurl the glass as well. Preferably following it up with a repulsor blast to level the entire party. He's been accosted three times to be told his tower is an ugly eyesore that is totally out of keeping with Gotham's proud architectural heritage, twice to demand to know why he's not signed Iron Man wholesale over to the army and once to ask if he didn't receive a full run-down of the dress-code.

The only bright spot is that he's managed to avoid the host. Either that or the host is avoiding him. He's spotted Justin hob-nobbing it up with various people but always safely in the distance. Probably trying to dissociate himself from Tony for when the other guests inevitably start to complain.

Actually, there _is_ another bright spot in the shape of a gorgeous woman in the deepest red dress he's ever seen, who keeps throwing him curious glances from the next clump of people over. She has long silky black hair, full-lips and a firm chin, a combination that is instantly striking. He would very much like to go and introduce himself, but he's conscious of the time and the reason he's actually there. Maybe when he's gotten Hammer's files, he can find her again.

He makes vague excuses to the latest set of ghouls and makes a b-line for the conference centre. Luckily no one tries to start a conversation with him on the way over. The advantages of not being the right sort of people, he supposes.

Taking out his phone as he goes inside, he plays with the screen as if he's glued to social media. JARVIS begins to scan their surroundings, noting the wi-fi and picking out the trunk cables in the roof. Tony fully expects to have to spend the next half-hour hiding in a washroom stall in order to hack in but then one of Hammer's flunkies appears at his shoulders. “If you need to make a call, sir, conference rooms have been set aside for guest use.”

The flunky takes him down a corridor of glass-fronted rooms, currently occupied mostly by middle-aged brokers hunched over their phones and looking ready to choke in their stiff formal collars. Tony does not relish the idea of trying to work next to one of them but luckily the room he's shown into is empty. “Please take as long as you need, sir,” the flunky says, “Mr Hammer understands that his guests are all busy people who sometimes need their privacy even on a night off.”

The line is painfully rehearsed and as soon as he's alone, Tony quickly locates the hidden camera and microphones. Yeah, Justin definitely values his guests _thinking_ they have privacy. Luckily, he thought to bring along the phone with the noise-cancelling tech installed. “OK buddy,” he whispers to JARVIS, “Show me what we've got.”

   
  


* * *

 

“No-no-no- WORK you miserable malfunctioning pile of – ARGH!”

It's not working and Eddie is half-certain it's because he got up for that drink. Because he _had it_ a moment ago and now he can't seem to focus –

There's a loud knock from somewhere upstairs. Eddie mutters something unpleasant about inconsiderate neighbours –

Whatever ill-mannered imbecile is outside knocks again.

And after several minutes of hammering it occurs to Eddie that they might actually be at _his_ door.

He waits a moment longer just to be sure and wonders with a sudden spike of panic if it's the police. (No – no – of course not! Those dunderheads wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of comprehending his –)

There's another knock. Whoever it is they're persistent. Eddie wonders if it's actually against the law to murder Jehovah's Witnesses or if, in this case, it would count as reasonable provocation.

Finally, unable to come up with any sufficiently expedient alternative, he opens the door.

The person on the other side isn't _the_ biggest white man Eddie's ever seen but he's certainly close. He's wearing a nondescript dark suit and carrying something heavy in a paper bag and for a horrible second Eddie wonder's whether _Hammer_ sent someone to –

“Good afternoon,” he says with a smile that undermines the idea he might be an assassin, “My name's Bruce Wayne. Do you have a moment to talk about voter disenfranchisement?”

Eddie's incredible, magnificent brain stalls. He pauses for a fraction of a second and Wayne apparently takes that as an invitation to continue because then he's talking about the low turnout in the last election and people being turned away at the polls.

He leans forward a little as he does it, which makes Eddie lean back. And gives Wayne enough space to get a foot in the door.

It is, Eddie has to admit, a remarkably efficient tactic. Except now Gotham's favourite campaigner, activist, marathon-runner and all round do-gooder is clogging up _Eddie's_ flat and blathering on about how important participation in the political system is. He's stopped Eddie's _real_ work about as effectively as a mug of coffee over a motherboard.

“Are _you_ registered to vote, sir?” Bruce Wayne asks as though it's an important question rather than the most frivolous distraction possible from what is clearly the greater issue at hand.

And oh God, if Eddie can't _get rid of him_ quickly he'll never be able to get through Hammer's security system tonight!

Bruce Wayne is giving him a look that seems to signify that Eddie has missed some rather important beats in the conversation.

“Oh I'm sorry,” Wayne says as he produces a handful of forms and pamphlets from his bag, “Would you prefer if I sign?”

And oh God Bruce Wayne knows ASL, of _course_ Bruce Wayne knows ASL – he probably knows all sorts of things, absolutely _none_ of which will be the slightest use to Eddie. It's all he can to do shake his head at the tidal-wave of earnestness bearing down on him.

He glances at the clock on the wall and it is already _far_ too late and a quick estimation suggests that trying to hurl Wayne bodily out of his flat would probably break 90% of the bones and muscles in Eddie's body.

He glances at his computers. Bruce Wayne is still talking and as tempting as _trying_ to manhandle him might be, it would be difficult to achieve his ultimate goal of MAKING HAMMER PAY if GCPD's finest came to enquire on the whereabouts of the city's favourite humanitarian.

Eddie takes a deep breath.

“I'm sorry but I'm _terribly_ busy at the moment.” Eddie just about manages to say it without gritting his teeth.

He half expects some kind of protest but Wayne nods without hesitation. “Of course. I'll just leave these here.” He deposits the forms on top of one of the external hard drives. “Thank you so much for your time.”

He grabs Eddie's hand and shakes it firmly before turning on his heel and leaving.

Eddie stares down the street after him then gets enough of a grip to shut the door. This time he bolts it. And if anyone else knocks, he'll just pretend he isn't home.

He sits back down. Of course now he's completely lost his thread.

That blundering simpleton –

And now he can't focus! Typical!

Eddie swears a blue streak at the monitor. He's quite breathless when he hears _another_ knock at the door.

They don't leave.

It's going to be Wayne again he can _feel_ it. Shouldn't have encouraged him, _should_ have kicked him out so the blasted moron would know he wasn't welcome –

“Go away!” Eddie yells up. “I'm busy!”

The knocking stops.

He just about has time to expel a relived sigh before someone kicks the door in.

  
  


* * *

 

“ _Sir, I have access to the HammerTech corporate mainframe. Would you care to specify search criteria?”_

Tony, who's always had doubts about Ivan Vanko's rampage at the Stark Expo, is tempted to tell JARVIS to start with references to Project Dynamo. But it's not as if anything he finds out today will be the kind of evidence he could bring up in court, so maybe it's better not to know. Instead, he says, “Find out what was going at the four sites that were attacked. What they were working on.”

While JARVIS works, he gets up and wanders over to the window. The view is back down into the garden. He can see the marquee and the people circulating along the terraces. Past the walls, the sun is beginning to sink towards the skyline. The skyscrapers are casting long shadows over each other. Tony puts his sunglasses on.

“ _Files recovered. I have prepared a breakdown of the relevant details.”_ Text and images flash across the glasses, already annotated as JARVIS crunches the data.

Tony reads quickly, careful to stand like he's admiring the view. It's pretty much what he would expect from Hammer's R&D work: a few pieces of exoskeleton tech, some weapons research, a couple of medical projects . . . there's no through-line. Nothing to link the sites together. “Maybe someone just really doesn't like Hammer.”

“ _I am trying to trace any common connections between the research staff. Unfortunately the personnel files are not directly accessible from the servers I have infiltrated so far. Forcing my way further into the systems may trigger internal alarms.”_

“OK, hang fire for a second. Let's think about this. Someone invents a weapon that can freeze things solid and then goes around robbing places working on _this_ stuff? Even if they needed the money, why not just sell the ice gun? Hell, Hammer would have bought it in a heartbeat. So why the crime spree? Doesn't make sense.”

He takes out his phone and starts playing with the information, turning it this way and that to see if he can find a pattern. There's nothing there. If this is targeted – and it's got to be, hasn't it? – then it's generally against Hammer's things, not any particular part of his company. Which is fair enough. Justin Hammer isn't a very likeable person. But still. There are neater ways to run a vendetta –

The building shakes. Somewhere, masonry crumbles noisily. Somewhere nearer, someone screams.

Outside in the garden, people start running, stumbling, yelling.

Shots split the air. Machine-gun fire.

And a plume of white-blue light sweeps across a group of those oh-so discrete security guards.

Then silence.

Tony stares at the people in suits, frozen and twisted, their contorted bodies covered in thick ice. He can't tell if they're alive or dead. Men in balaclavas rush in with their normal guns to shout at the guests and herd them together. Just past the line of frosted guards Justin stands stock-still, face like thunder. Because _how dare_ these commoners crash his party.

It takes half a minute or so for the shouting to stop, for everyone to get the message that moving and making noise are against the rules. Only then does the guy in charge make himself known.

He's tall, real tall, maybe seven and a half feet in his armoured suit. Not armour like Tony's, more like a space-suit crossed with a couple of industrial robots and a pair of snowshoes. He walks heavily, bulky arms and legs moving mechanically. The upper chest, almost one solid section, flows straight into a domed helmet misted with frost. As he turns his head, his eyes blaze out like two red-hot coals. In his right hand is the gun. The Gun. It's an ugly looking black tube, linked to his backpack with long pipes and cables. The tip vents steam like a geyser about to blow.

So that's the Snowman, Tony thinks.

Well.

Crap.

  
  


* * *

 

Jason has never paid so much attention to Bruce’s ‘Participation Is the Backbone of Democracy’ speech before. He keeps his eyes on Nashton’s door, just in case.

But from the way Dad sounds like a script, Jason figures Nashton is about as interested in politics as Dick is in death metal.

After three minutes and a handful of seconds Bruce comes out again.

Jason taps his fingers against his earpiece, which does absolutely nothing. It seems to take Dad a very long time to reach a corner, turn and take out his Stark-phone.

“Anything?” Jason asks a little desperately.

“ _Well Mr Nashton isn’t very house proud and he’s working on some sort of coding,”_ Dad observes over the line, _“He’s got an awful lot of computing power in that flat but I couldn’t say what he’s doing with it. He might just work from home.”_

Jason sighs. After a moment’s thought, Bruce continues.

“ _Whatever he’s doing he has a deadline. He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”_

Which is more than they knew before but still not a whole lot of help.

Jason wishes they could take Nashton . . . somewhere else. Some place other people could keep an eye on him for a while. Somewhere he’d definitely be _safe –_

Sometimes, when it's the right sort of neighbourhood, they _can_ get people to go. He’s been to a few, always at night, always in costume. Dad usually makes him help with the packing.

But Nashton _doesn't_ live in that sort of neighbourhood. There aren’t any bats spray-painted in the alleys, or ragged paper silhouettes stuck to people’s windows. No signals that people here welcome help from the shadows.

Jason sighs again. On the other end of the radio Dick says he’s sorry Jason has to stay out on watch in a tone that still sounds obscenely cheery.

Jason’s considering cussing him out when a van stops a couple of yards from Nashton’s door. A man in overalls gets out and half a dozen men pile after him.

At first Jason wonders if they’re from the landlord. It _is_ that kind of neighbourhood. But then they start hammering on Nashton’s door and . . . there’s too many of them for it to be anything good . . . and if it was ‘ _just’_ the landlord’s local toughs they’d have a key.

Jason’s fingers go pointlessly up to his ear piece. He half-hopes it isn’t Hammer, for Nashton’s sake –

“Dad? Something’s going on,” he says, already backing down the alley way and opening his bag, “One van, seven men that I can see. I’m suiting up. Red out.”

He drops the volume on his earpiece so he can ignore Dad telling Cassie to hurry, Dick asking if he should head out too. He gets into the costume as quick as he can, stuffs his clothes in his bag and hefts the –

He doesn’t get any further before there’s a crash. Jason turns to see Nashton's door splintering inwards. “Fuck.”

He sprints out of the alleyway, vaults over the bonnet of the van and plants both feet between a goon’s shoulder blades.

Jason has time to smack another one – a woman built like a gorilla – upside the head before the mob turns to face him. The guy Jason kicked starts to get up and there’s a noise from the driver’s side of the van, like someone else getting out.

It occurs to Jason that perhaps waiting for Cassie might not have been a terrible idea. He raises his tonfa, expecting them to rush him. But their leader, a bearded man who looks like he’s wearing some kind of anti-contamination suit under his clothes, holds them back.

“You got _any idea_ who you’re dealing with punk?” the man growls.

Jason figures it’s rhetorical because then he raises his hand, like Iron Man about to fire a laser bolt.

“I’m **Firebrand!** ”

There’s a noise like an aerosol exploding and a jet of flame bursts out of the man’s fingertips, straight towards Jason’s head.

Some days, he really hates Gotham.


	2. Issue 2

Jason hits the floor and a wall of flame washes over the van making the paint blister and boil. He rolls left and strikes. The tonfa hits an assailant’s knee with a crunch. She crumples. Jason keeps going.

It’s a race against the device Firebrand has up his sleeve, a gamble on the idea that he won’t shoot his own people.

Jason comes up, a goon in front of him, at the same time as Firebrand levels his arm, points his fingers towards them both, flames licking at the tips –

And he hesitates.

Jason grabs the goon by the shirt, tugs, twists and hurls him at Firebrand.

It bowls both of them over and they crash into a few of the others. In the seconds it buys him Jason sees the driver charging towards him and one of the thugs going for the damaged door. Jason dives after him and his fist closes in thin air, millimetres from the guy's collar.

The driver slams into his back.

Jason hits the wall and twists just fast enough to block a punch aimed at his head. Another of the thugs joins in, crowding him against the wall. The blows fall on his arms and ribs. From the corner of his eye he sees Firebrand stagger to his feet.

The one he got in the leg hasn’t moved which probably means she can’t. There’s shouting and swearing pouring out of Nashton’s ruined door. Firebrand edges his way towards the van, like he’s trying to get a clear shot –

More yelling, something about Nashton –

One of the thugs peels off and heads down the stairs. Firebrand roars at them to stay back – Nashton screams –

There’s boots on the stairs, a moment’s distraction for the goon on his left –

Jason grasps his wrist and shoulder and hurls him down the stairs after his friend.

There’s a loud crash and a lot of swearing. Jason sprints through the gap. Straight at the pair Firebrand ordered to stay back. Straight into the line of fire –

He hears the noise again, like an aerosol on a bonfire just before it goes up. He thinks he might be too slow –

Firebrand’s wall of flame drifts after him, almost at Jason’s back. Landing a punch on the first goon’s head, Jason twists –

And kicks him into the fire.

There’s an awful, awful shriek and the flames cut out. Heavy footsteps on the stairs, Firebrand cursing loud and long –

One of them rushes up behind Jason and strikes hard enough that his knees buckle and the world wavers.

Firebrand’s still yelling and then there’s a goon either side of Jason, huge hands on his shoulders hauling him up. The driver’s helping the burnt man back to the van and in the doorway Nashton is fighting his own pair of thugs for every step.

The goons hold Jason up and lean as far from him as they can. Somewhere, coming closer, Jason can hear a motorbike’s engine and he just hopes that it’s –

Firebrand raises his hand. “You’re gonna burn, you son of a bitch!”

There’s a squeal of brakes and tires.

And Cassie’s motorbike mounts the sidewalk, heading straight for Firebrand.

  
  


* * *

 

“JARVIS, launch the armour!” Tony watches helplessly as the Snowman advances on Hammer. Since that exo-suit looks capable of snapping a man in half, Justin's pretty brave to be standing his ground like he is. Then again, maybe he's seen worse.

“ _Armour deployed. Estimated travel time: ninety seconds.”_

The Snowman looms over Justin, gun loose at his side. He's saying something but through the glass, all Tony can hear is a low buzzing. One huge gauntlet gestures menacingly.

Hammer leans slightly backwards, and Tony can just about make out his scowl. He starts talking, lips moving quickly, hands jerking to and fro in reassuring gestures. He keeps that up for a good while but it's clear the Snowman isn't buying it. He grabs a fist-full of Hammer's shirt-front, all but yanking Justin off his feet.

Tony's really starting to wish he could hear what they're saying.

“ _Forty seconds.”_

“Hurry it up!” Now the Snowman has turned around and is dragging Hammer back the way he came in, out of Tony's line of sight. The masked thugs are retreating with him, covering the guests to stop anyone doing anything heroic. Tony presses himself against the glass, trying to keep them in view.

“ _Sir, I cannot see any easily accessible entrance to the building.”_

“Then make one! Hammer won’t mind, I’m trying to save his life!”

“ _Based on previous examples of Mr Hammer’s psychological reaction to the destruction of his property, I do not believe that will be the case.”_

“JARVIS, just get me the damn armour!”

The roof explodes downwards. A man-sized red and gold missile embeds itself in the floor. Tony brushes dust from his jacket. “Thank you.”

Tearing off his sunglasses, he folds them in half twice and shoves them into his pocket. Then he runs to the missile. It opens, going from man-sized to man-formed. He steps inside and the armour embraces him, tight as a second skin.

Iron Man smashes though the windows and hurtles out into the garden. Pulling a hair-pin turn, he rockets after the Snowman. The inside of the Hammer building flashes past, recently remodelled by way of machine-gun and snowstorm. The light at the end of the tunnel becomes a quaint street scene: Hammer being bundled into a heavy armoured van, the Snowman watching, a couple of his goon-squad standing guard.

Two quick low-power repulsor blasts take care of the hired help. He lands on the front steps, legs bent, hands open and ready to fire. There's a second thought in there somewhere but he decides to go with the obvious line anyway. “Yo, Snowman – freeze!”

The dome comes around, the red eyes blazing through the mist. “That’s _Mister_ Freeze to you!”

It's right then that Tony realises he's badly underestimated his opponent. The big guy moves faster than anyone wearing that much heavy machinery should be able to. Tony's fingers flex to fire but the stream from the gun is already slamming into his chest. The impact is far heavier than he expected. Dimly, he realises it's a kind of mixture, part fluid, part crystal slurry. Immediately, the world turns white. Frost coats his vision. The HUD glitches. He can feel the ice sweeping up and down his limbs, crushingly tight and bitterly cold. This isn't just surface build-up – he's being encased. Raw terror curdles in his stomach as he realises he's trapped, immobile, blind.

“ _Heat exchangers overloading,”_ JARVIS warns, _“Temperature differential exceeding design tolerances.”_

“There are quicker ways to say I’m stuck in a block of ice! Divert power to the chest RT, we’ll burn our way out.”

“ _Attempting to comply. P-power s-systems compromizzed.”_

Tony flexes his hands uselessly. The repulsors are offline, either because of the ice or his last order. He can feel himself starting to go numb in important places.

The armour kicks against his chest. Heat, glorious heat, spreads out over his heart. The unibeam fires and punches a hole through the ice. A little bit late, he hopes there's no one in the way.

With an almighty heave, he smashes his way free. Which probably looked pretty epic from outside but he follows it up by falling on his face, so he should probably EMP the hell out of any nearby smart-phones.

The van's halfway to the expressway. Tony jumps up and kicks in his jets – and is rewarded with a short blast of thrust and a long skid down the asphalt.

“ _Flight systems have been damaged, sir.”_

Tony feels the clunk of his forehead against the kerb is answer enough.

  
  


* * *

 

Her feet tuck neatly underneath her on the seat of the bike and then Batgirl launches into the air.

The bike falls on its side, skids, and Jason has a long glorious moment to drink in the look on Firebrand’s face as it keeps on ploughing towards him.

Firebrand dives forwards and kisses the dirt.

Cassie spins. She’s landed a kick before she’s hit the floor; square in the face of the goon on Jason’s left.

The woman folds, falls and Jason breaks free. He doesn’t think about the man he’s left behind for Cassie – she can handle him, and the goon squad has almost got Nashton to the van.

Firebrand’s getting to his hands and knees so Jason takes the time to step on him as he goes by.

Nashton, to give him credit, sure as hell isn’t going quietly. He’s struggling and screaming and doing his damndest to get away. He just doesn’t have the strength or the training to break free from the two huge guys dragging him away.

Not until Jason ploughs into them.

His shoulder shoves into the nearest thug, hitting him between the shoulder blades and knocking the air out of him with an audible ‘oomph’. He staggers and Nashton struggles loose. Jason grabs his hand.

Behind them there’s a crunch and a thud as Cassie downs another goon. There’s a shout, a curse, a sharp hiss of pain as she kicks Firebrand back to the curb –

Jason can’t stop. There isn’t time for explanations, there isn’t time to check –

He tugs Nashton towards the alley he stashed his bike in. Behind him, he can hear Firebrand swearing, the rev of Cassie’s bike –

And then they’re round the corner and he’s throwing a helmet at Nashton, tugging his own on over his mask.

“Waitaminute –” Nashton starts. “Who the fu –”

“ _Later,_ **”** Jason growls.

The bike sputters into life.

Nashton gets on.

  
  


* * *

 

“Tony? What the hell is going on?” Pepper's tone is dangerous. She stands in the doorway, looking around the Hall of Armour as if expecting there to be a fire. Tony glances at her once then goes back to coding furiously.

“Mr Freeze just snatched Justin Hammer from the middle of his party and drove off with him. Kind of serious. Did you get those chemical baths sent over to HammerTech?”

“Well, yes. We kept them on standby like you asked and – what happened to the suit?”

It's lying in pieces across the floor, parts of it bent in places they really shouldn't. Tony keeps typing. “Got cooled to sub-zero temperatures faster than it was designed to. Fused some seals. Had to cut it open.”

“And I guess the thrusters broke too?”

“Yeah, how'd you know?”

Pepper's mouth goes thin and disapproving as she picks her way over to join him. “You walked in the front door in full armour.”

“Oh, yeah.”

She looks at the discarded suit for a moment and chews her lip. “Look, if this 'freeze-ray' is –”

“More of a freeze-spray, actually.”

“Whatever – Tony, it broke your armour! If it's that dangerous, please tell me you're not about to rush out after . . . did you just call him 'Mr Freeze'?”

“He called him that. And I can't rush out after him. I've got to find him first.”

Tony hits the return key with feeling. The screens in front of him change to show a map and a progress bar rapidly crawling to 100%. _“Code uploaded,”_ says JARVIS, _“Satellites now realigned to cover the greater Gotham area.”_

“Satellites?”

Spinning, Tony nods enthusiastically. “See, even though our first meeting kind of ended with a no-score draw, I did get enough data on the weapon that I think I can track it if it fires again. Obviously, it can't just be spraying ice at someone, not to cause the kind of temperature drop I experienced.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, it's not thermodynamically possible. He has to be somehow taking energy out of the environment in order to –”

“Tony, I work for the world's leading tech company. I know about thermodynamics.”

“Right, anyway, I’ve repurposed a couple of satellites to track the effects from the gun. The next time he fires it, the environmental changes should show up clear as day.”

“The next time – can’t you find it sooner?”

“Wish I could. There might be an emission trail but it’s gonna be hard to track from orbit and it’s not like I’ve put spectrographs in all the traffic cameras. Though that’s a pretty good idea . . . not a good idea,” he corrects when he see Pepper’s expression.

Looping a strand of hair around her finger, she sighs and examines her StarkPad for a couple of seconds. She’s tired, he realises and then also realises that it’s getting into the evening now and she probably shouldn’t still be at work given that he was supposed to be taking the night off for the Gala –

“What happens when you find . . . ‘Mr Freeze’?” she asks, “If he can do this to your armour . . . weren’t you working on an arctic suit a while back?”

“Yeah, but it’s not ready. Problems with the insulating composite – I’ve got JARVIS to retrofit the Heartbreaker’s chest RT into a, um, heat shield. It should take the edge off anything Freeze can throw at me.”

“So your plan is . . . to go up against a lunatic with a freeze- _spray_ using an electric fire you rewired from your heavy artillery suit.”

“The way you say it doesn’t sound as reassuring as the way I do.”

“I’m not sure if you’ll cook yourself first or just blow up.”

“I’m going to aim for neither.”

“This is crazy.”

“More or less crazy than blowing the ARC reactor to take down Obadiah?”

“That was your plan!”

“And it worked.”

“It nearly killed you too!”

“Pepper, sooner or later, Freeze is going to actually kill people. I need to stop that. And like it or not, Hammer’s people too. I should probably save him.”

“Yes, obviously but –”

“What?”

A beep from Pepper’s StarkPad ends the debate. “It’s the Commissioner.”

Without waiting to ask permission, Tony transfers the call to one of his screens. “Hi Jim. How’s it looking down there?”

Police Commissioner James Gordon grimaces emphatically behind his moustache. Around him, the remains of Hammer’s garden are crawling with GCPD officers. “Pretty much as you’d expect. Those magic water tanks you sent over are thawing the victims out nicely but that’s about the only good news. We're still no closer to an ID on this –”

“Mr Freeze,” Tony supplies cheerfully.

“. . . right. I'll say this, he's a cut above the normal costumed lunatics. Seems to have done all this just to take Hammer and when you step back and look at it, he did a pretty clean job.”

“Yeah, a real professional. He's definitely not Justin's biggest fan, I got that from the body language – and the whole kidnapping thing.”

“I don't suppose you were able to get a decent look at his face? All I'm getting from the witnesses here amounts to 'some guy with a fish-bowl on his head'.”

“More space-helmet, I'd say. No, sorry – couldn't see inside properly. I'll send you the footage I got before . . .”

“You were frozen solid,” Pepper completes.

Tony glowers at her. The Commissioner smiles slightly. “Don't worry, I've already seen the video on YouTube. I'm guessing – hoping, actually – that you've got a way to track him?”

“Something like that. I'm working on it. It's going to take a wh–”

An incoming call suddenly appears on one of the other screens, outlined in orange for 'maximum urgency'. The computer answers before Tony can lift a finger.

“Mr Stark, did you just move our satellites?” demands a red-head wearing glasses and a scowl.

Tony blinks. “Er, technically they're my satellites. They've got my name on them and . . . I put them up there.”

“We were running calibration on the environmental monitoring system,” the red-head states coldly, “and now we've wasted a week's work because you re-tasked them without telling us. Oh, hey dad.”

“Um, hi sweetie.” The Commissioner clears his throat. “Shouldn't you be at home by now?”

Barbara Gordon's expression darkens that little bit more. “I was working late to try and get this finished on schedule. Now we're going to be _at least_ a week and a half behind because –”

“I borrowed the satellites to help catch a dangerous maniac!” Tony throws up his hands. “If it's that much of a problem, I'll get JARVIS to help you get the calibration done quicker –”

“Mr Stark, the whole point of ORACLE is to create more dedicated number-crunching capacity. We can’t have JARVIS just keep propping us up all the time. No offence, JARVIS.”

“ _None taken, Miss Gordon.”_

“If you'd given us some warning we could have suspended the run but as it is –”

An alarm goes off and the map of Gotham starts flashing with symbols. “Good timing,” Tony mutters. He dives for the keyboard. “Sorry Babs, gonna have to get back to you – Commish, I've got a lock. Freeze just used his gun. I'll send you the address when I'm in the air. JARVIS, I need the Heartbreaker.”

“ _Retrofitting is complete but the alterations are untested.”_

“Business as usual. Suit me up.”

Tony swipes at the screen then runs to the middle of the room. Mechanical arms fall on him like a demon octopus, sealing him into the armour.

Pepper watches and chews her lip some more. “Be careful,” she calls as the helmet encloses his head.

“Don’t worry! If I get turned into a Stark-sicle, I’m leaving the company to you!”

“What? Don't you dare!”

Her shout follows him up through the launch doors and out into the evening sky.

  
  


* * *

 

They drive into the docks as the sun sinks and the shadows grow long. There are street lights along their route, but they seem fainter than in the city. The smoke rolls in thick off the industrial district with the prevailing wind and the bike keeps turning –

Which means Eddie has lost track of where they are. His heart is beating so hard he can hear it and now that he’s had time to think, he’s not sure why he got on the bike. He’s not sure he wants to go where the man in the mask is heading.

He doesn’t think he’ll like what’s waiting for him at the other end any more than he’d have liked what was waiting in the back of that plain van.

The bike swings into a garage even darker than the street. They stop.

“Wait –” Eddie says but the man in the mask doesn’t.

He grasps Eddie’s wrist and looks like he’s perfectly prepared to pull him the rest of the way. He might even be able to do just that. He’s powerfully built, and he threw those morons around as if they weighed nothing at all.

Eddie’s more than smart enough to know he won’t win but he tugs back anyway.

It doesn’t get him anywhere.

“Who are you? Where are we?” His voice comes out sounding desperate and he can’t bring himself to care. “Why are you – ?”

There’s a hole in the floor towards the back of the garage, like an uncovered manhole, with a ladder going down into the dark.

Eddie stops short. The man in the mask fixes him with a level look.

“I can’t tell you who we are, but we’re here to help.” His voice sounds odd, as though he’s throwing it lower than it should be.

“Well you’ve helped marvellously,” Eddie says with, under the circumstances, a remarkably appropriate level of sincerity, “And thank you most kindly for dealing with those ruffians so adroitly but if you don’t mind –”

He tries to turn away. The man in the mask catches his arm.

“Are you kidnapping me?” Eddie asks weakly but the man in the mask shakes his head.

“If you go back out there, sir, they’ll find you again and we might not be around next time.”

“So I’m supposed to follow you into a dank hole and wait until –”

“We just want to talk to you, sir,” the man in the mask says smoothly, “We need to find out why they're after you. Once we know that . . . we can make it go away.”

He says it all as if he believes it utterly. As if he (they?) is some sort of guardian angel –

And Eddie doesn’t believe in magic but he doesn’t know what to do faced with someone who does, either.

“Who are you?” Eddie asks again.

“Nobody important,” the man in the mask says.

He gestures to the ladder and after a moment Eddie climbs down.

There seem to be few other options. That mob (almost certainly Hammer – why didn't he make that connection sooner?) is still out there. They will have taken his computers, if they haven’t destroyed them.

And he’s missed his deadline anyway.

The ladder goes down further than Eddie expected but the bottom, when he reaches it, isn’t damp. And it isn’t a sewage line as he’d half-feared.

The man in the mask lands beside him and takes a torch from his pocket.

“This way.”

The tunnels are rounded and roofed with cabling. It takes a moment for Eddie to recognise them but it is clearly part of the old subway, driven out of business, boarded up and concreted over by the skyrail. Eddie can just about remember other children playing on the lines . . .

They walk along the tracks until they reach a station. There’s equipment and boards full of paper notes along the walls but Eddie can’t make much else out in the gloom.

There’s a chair in the centre.

“Sit here please,” the man in the mask instructs, “We just have some questions. You can leave whenever you like.”

Eddie sits.

And the lights suddenly come on, bright and remorseless and aimed at Eddie. It cuts off the rest of the station more thoroughly than the gloom.

He starts to see things moving on the other side, shadows against the light. People.

First two, then four, then three, then five. There’s the man in the mask, blocky and solid. There’s someone lithe and quick, too fast to see properly. There are figures in hoods that seem to split apart and merge together as the brightness makes his eyes water. There’s a feminine silhouette with spikes or horns stretching up from her head –

And then there’s a shadow that eclipses them all, huge and deep and dark.

It comes closer and its edges waver, rippling.

It comes closer still and starts to take shape. It looks like a man, tall and broad shouldered, but there’s something wrapped around him that moves lightly, like fabric in a breeze, blurring him into the dark.

A mask looms out of the light, black and tapering up to two points.

It hits Eddie like a taser and suddenly he knows, he knows _exactly_ who these people are and where he is and oh God but they’re supposed to be a story, they’re supposed to be a myth, they’re not supposed to be –

“The Batman,” Eddie breathes and the shadows draw closer.

  
  


* * *

 

There are no HammerTech signs on the building. No billboards proudly announcing that they're 'making the future happen' or any of the other meaningless slogans that were usually plastered across Hammer's facilities. It’s just a long, grey block among a whole lot of other long, grey blocks. The very definition of an anonymous warehouse.

“We sure this is the place?” Tony magnifies the view, trying to pick out anything unusual.

Something at the far end erupts in a fountain of fire and shrapnel. Blue white light flares in the windows. Warning signs and target icons flicker across the HUD.

“Never mind.”

Among the Heartbreaker suit’s disadvantages (beyond it being essentially a kill-everything solution of the kind he wouldn’t normally dream of using in a populated city) is a lack of manoeuvrability, so it takes longer than Tony would like to land. By the time he gets down there, the forecourt and loading bay are a warzone. It looks like the warehouse is being defended by automated security systems, the same kind they sell to protect military installations. Luckily, someone had the intellect to dial down the charge on the tasers and load rubber bullets into the guns. Lucky, that is, for Gotham’s non-armour wearing inhabitants. Not so lucky for HammerTech since it’s made it a hell of a lot easier for Mr Freeze to walk straight through the whole lot.

Tony eyes the frosted over auto-turrets critically. Yeah, to be fair, he wouldn’t have thought to design them to be able to withstand sudden sub-zero cold snaps either. At least they managed to take out Freeze’s backing group. He steps past one of the goons, all neatly wrapped up in a mesh net. The freeze gun goes off again inside. Tony flexes his hands, readying the repulsors. “You might want to stay down,” he advises the goon, who stopped struggling when he saw who was standing over him, “There’s about to be a change in the weather.”

He works his way quickly through the loading dock and into the warehouse proper. A couple of smashed-open doors in and it’s immediately clear that it _isn’t_ a warehouse. The first couple of rooms are workshops. The equipment is top-of-the-line, the best HammerTech can offer. But . . . not used recently. Some of the instruments are even still in their plastic wrapping.

Weird.

Water drips from ice formations jutting from the walls and floor. They’ve forced tiles and panels apart, destroying alarms and auto-turrets. The trail is easy to follow to the top of a long flight of stairs down into the . . . basement?

Tony has one foot on the first step when a noise makes him jerk his head up. A heat signature shifts behind one of the blocks of ice. Something clatters away across the floor, some bit of equipment dislodged during the attack. Then a familiar face pokes out into the open.

“Iron Man?” Justin Hammer is pale in the frosty light. “Of course.”

“Don’t worry, I’m here to save you.” Tony can’t put any enthusiasm into his voice and frankly, it doesn’t matter.

“Well, thank you again, Tony, but everything is under control.”

“See, you say that, but I can see you shivering from here.”

“I got away from that lunatic, didn’t I? He’s after whatever he can steal. I led him here. Knew the security systems would –”

“Be no use whatsoever.”

“Yes, well. My men are on their way with something that will take care of this problem once and for all.”

“Yeah. Let me save them a job.”

Hammer’s sourness seems to lift, just a little. “Fine, if you want to be useful – I would be grateful if you could prevent him getting into the chamber at the far end down there. It contains sensitive equipment in a delicate stage of development and this rampage has already cost me too much as it is.”

“Right. Good call. Is there anyone down there?”

“The security alert I triggered will have sent them to the far end of the building, away from the intruders. They had plenty of time to get out.”

And with that display of touching concern ringing in his ears, Tony carries on down the stairs.


	3. Issue 3

Jason stands back from the ring of light and watches.

It’s all hands on deck for the first person they’ve managed to snatch from Hammer’s pet arsonist – their first chance at a _lead_ since their people at HammerTech don’t know a damn thing.

Dick looks like he isn’t paying the slightest bit of attention, but Jason’s seen him like that before and knows how misleading it is. Tim’s glued to his phone, which could mean he’s working hard or that he’s got a new app. Stephanie flits between him and Cassie, watching quietly from the shadows.

Jason’s focus is on the Batman and how if this chat goes sour they could come out of the night with nothing to show for it at all.

It _could_ easily go sour, Nashton isn’t _their_ kind of Gotham. He isn’t the sort of struggling that breathes easier when they see the suit. Jason hears the fear when Nashton whispers _that_ name and he isn’t sure the stories will carry them far enough this time. Not when Nashton was a few feet from turning into charcoal earlier in the evening.

The truth is, Jason’s worried about him. Nashton looks smaller than he did upstairs. He shrinks back in the chair away from the mask. He looks younger and he looks scared.

“I haven’t done anything.” Nashton says quietly.

The Batman nods once. “You worked for Justin Hammer.”

Nashton’s whole body stiffens as though all his muscles have gone tight at once. “Yes.”

He’s actually shaking. Jason wonders whether he should step in but two people in masks aren’t going to be any less threatening then one and –

“Tell me about it,” the Batman asks.

Nashton shivers. Jason takes a small step forward and then Nashton goes off like a firecracker.

The rant is loud enough to make Cassie wince, contains liberal use of the words ‘ignoramus’ and ‘unwarranted accusations’ and goes on long enough to confirm that Nashton has a pretty fucking impressive lung capacity.

“That wool-brained dunderhead _ruined me_!” Nashton complains, “ _ME!_ Over completely _unmerited_ allegations! Now even if I _had_ hacked into company files, what sort of shoddy second rate organisation _FIRES_ a computer technician who can get through their firewalls?! He should have _begged me_ to take a job in security but that _LACKWITTED BUFFOON –_ ”

Dick catches Jason’s eye and raises an eyebrow. Jason makes a hurried reassessment of Nashton’s mental health. He glances back at the board of the other victims – Nashton’s co-workers – and wonders whether Nashton will ramble through all the information they need without their names as prompts –

Jason would like to think that if Nashton actually had something concrete then Hammer would be standing trial. But that’s never been entirely how it works. And if Nashton _isn’t_ technically mentally ill then he’s at least obsessive.

And he’s black.

And he admitted that any information he has was obtained illegally –

Tim shoulders past Jason, phone clutched close to his chest. There’s a video playing on a loop, Jason sees the hot rod red of the Iron Man suit and then Tim shoves it towards Dick. Jason has to crane over Grayson’s shoulder to watch.

The footage is shaky and was obviously shot on another phone, but it’s the clearest shot of the Snowman yet.

Dick gives Tim a questioning look and Tim points to the suit’s arms, then the nozzle of the gun and –

Dick frowns. Jason gestures in a way that he hopes means they should have fucking shown this to Dad already.

Nashton is still talking as they edge up behind the Batman. Tim hands him the phone.

After a moment, the Batman turns the phone around to show Nashton. They don’t even have to ask, he stops dead in the middle of his raving and stares at the screen.

“That’s Project Blizzard!”

Dick catches Jason’s eye and grins. Jason can feel himself smiling back. They might have hit the jackpot after all.

  
  


* * *

 

The corridor at the bottom of the stairs is long and walled with glass, through which Tony can see labs that look like they have seen much more recent use than those at ground level. What he can’t see is the end of the corridor. It forks sharply and try as JARVIS might, they cannot get a clear read on the layout. It’s almost as if the place was deliberately designed to prevent mapping and Tony is strangely not in a hurry to rush in blind.

Then, from the corner of the suit’s eye, he sees a screen blinking welcomingly in the corner of one of the labs. “. . . is that an unsecured work-station?”

“It would seem so, sir.”

“Gimme.”

There's a lock on the lab door but it’s only electromagnetic so it’s easy to get open. He stomps over the to the terminal and prods the keyboard. The Heartbreaker isn’t built for dexterity, so the obvious thing is to get JARVIS to interface and he will swear up and down in court that he only meant to get a map of them place off the system. But then JARVIS goes and says, _“Sir, this terminal has access to records of numerous confidential projects that HammerTech are currently engaged in but none of them are situated in this facility.”_

“Huh. So what’re they doing here?”

“ _Unknown. There is no record in this system.”_

“Too secret for the secret projects list?”

“ _So it would appear. However, there are details of a project that I believe is relevant._

Text and images scroll on to the HUD, bypassing the terminal’s screen entirely – just in case someone’s watching. “Project . . . Blizzard. Huh. Looks like Hammer’s being attacked with his own tech. Funny how he didn’t mention that. But . . . there hasn’t been any work on this for three years. Looks like it was suspended after some kind of lab accident.” He plays with the keyboard, doing his best to find the facility map as slowly as humanly possible.

JARVIS pushes a particular window forward. _“The list of project staff, sir.”_

“Head of cryonic development, Victor . . . Fries. You’re kidding me, he’s actually ‘Mr Fries’? So this is our guy . . .”

“ _He was reported deceased in the same lab accident that shut down development work on the Blizzard Project.”_

“Reports of his death etc. etc. – so what, he’s back for revenge?” Tony sighs. “OK, here’s the map. Looks like Hammer was talking about this big space here. The main lab, I guess. Let’s get in there and find out what Victor’s after.”

“ _Sir, I’ve taken the liberty of downloading copies of the project library to your private server. I believe there are further details on the Blizzard project that you may wish to review later.”_

“Thanks, but if anyone asks, you’re the one who committed industrial espionage.”

  
  


* * *

 

He can’t think straight. All he can see is ragged shadows cast by overpowering, swallowing lights and his brain is starting to feel as worn as his eyes, straining for shadows.

“What is Project Blizzard?” the Batman asks in a voice that’s quiet and unnatural. As though the air rattling through wire gratings has formed words.

Eddie’s focus is wavering, _he_ is wavering and the Batman repeats his question again. Eddie shakes his head.

“Mister Nashton –”

Eddie’s not sure which of them says it but he’s suddenly hit with how _ridiculous_ it all is. He’d been bamboozled by the myth, the sudden shift from his routine, the twisting of the subway tunnels, the lights overhead.

Because if the Batman is real then _the Batman is a man_.

Just a person in a mask, not a force of nature looming against the light. Just people, ordinary, fallible, _breakable_ , people.

And then his brain is going too fast again, lashing together every desperate detail. The motor bikes: practical but not too expensive. The glimpse he had of the subway station: a few computers perhaps but nothing truly advanced. The weaponry: sticks and fists.

The subway, the whole stupid ploy, suddenly stinks of desperation. Because if they brought _sticks_ to fight a weapons-designer then that means one of two things: either they don’t _have_ better or they don’t know Hammer at all.

Eddie’s not sure which prospect scares him more.

And while of course _ultimately_ Eddie is smarter and would obviously trounce Hammer in any battle of wits, Hammer would never be chivalrous enough to fight _fair_ –

All the natural advantages in the world break down when faced with Hammer’s bank balance.

If Hammer could have _Eddie_ tracked down, dragged from his home and his equipment destroyed then he _will_ certainly find the Batman –

Without really thinking about it Eddie stands up.

He’s almost as tall as the Batman, significantly scrawnier, but they are almost the same height.

“I want to leave,” Eddie says softly.

“WHAT?!” The noise comes from behind the Batman, another shadow against the light. Eddie thinks it might be the man in the mask.

Whoever it is, they start protesting. The Batman raises a hand and they fall silent.

“With your help we can take down Hammer,” the Batman says in his quiet, wind-in-the-grate way. “You want that.”

“I want to leave,” Eddie repeats.

“Why?”

The idea that it might need to be explained brings Eddie up short.

And he does _want_ to leave but his feet do not appear to be listening to his common sense. ‘ _Executive dysfunction,’_ Eddie thinks, though it could just as easily be fear.

He takes a step. There’s movement behind the lights but Eddie never makes it outside of the beam. Instead he turns and paces, two steps one side of the chair, two steps the other way. He should really leave –

The Batman doesn’t move.

A third possibility drifts like a shadow over the surface of Eddie’s mind. What if they _do_ know what Hammer is capable of and they _could_ have brought guns but they chose sticks? That idea is certainly the most terrifying of the three –

That's not what Eddie says though.

He never bothered trying the police. It’s difficult, looking back, to pin down exactly why. Eddie’s grasp of law might be vague but he’s reasonably certain a number of the files he read were incriminating. And he knows, intellectually, that the police are supposed to protect witnesses and whistle-blowers.

He also knows, with the same instinct that made him get on the back of the motorbike, that the GCPD’s finest would have dismissed him out of hand. Between the structure of his brain and the colour of his skin . . . they’d have turned him out faster than you could say ‘credible witness’.

And it wasn’t _safe_. Talking about Hammer _isn’t safe –_

That’s why he had to –

He had to –

His brain skips several steps and Eddie finds himself thinking about body cameras because really what it comes down to is –

“Trust.”

It comes out as a whisper. Eddie’s not sure if anyone else hears it.

The rest of it builds up, words piling up in his chest until it feels like he’s going to burst. He almost wants to clamp it down and run.

“You want me to . . . what? Tell _you_ ‘everything’? Just _trust_ that you’ll be able to do something and it will all _magically_ turn out alright? _I don’t_ _ **know you –**_ ” The last words come out with a snap but Eddie can’t stop himself now.

The shadows move but the Batman stays exactly where he is.

“I don’t know you but I _do_ know Hammer! I know what he does to the people who cross him! And if I tell _you_ anything, _I’m_ the one who’ll suffer for it! Because he knows me. And you – you’ll offer up some ridiculous platitudes about ‘doing the right thing’ and once you’ve squeezed everything useful out of me _I’ll_ be back up there with _him_. And you’ll be down here. _**You’ll**_ be safe!”

It sounds almost like a curse. The nagging voice in the back of Eddie’s mind is getting louder, trying to remind him that man or not, the Batman is _bigger_ and _stronger_ and behind dozens of battered bodies in the GCPD’s cells –

“I won’t be able to tell Hammer where you are or what you look like. And maybe one day you _will_ stop Hammer. But you’ll hang me out to dry to do it! You want me to trust _you_ but _I’m_ the only one taking a risk! _I’m_ the one who’ll pay for it if it all goes wrong!”

The silence isn’t longer than a second but it’s stretched so taut it feels like the air might snap. The Batman still hasn’t moved.

“Well?!” Eddie snaps, “Haven’t you got anything to _say_?”

The shadow wavers and then the Batman steps forward into Eddie’s little circle of light. Huge and looming like a monster from a myth.

“Mister Nashton,” he says in that whisper-over-wire voice. “You are absolutely right.”

And he takes off the mask.

  
  


* * *

 

The right fork then on through a clean-room and down to the end, where big reinforced doors once barred the way. They've been frozen open, filled with ice until the locks and hinges burst before being knocked clean out of the doorway. And now, in the hole they've left behind . . .

A smooth wall, glassy and thick – it's basically as if Fries got a glacier to cover his back. Instant roadblock for however long it takes to melt.

“Doesn't look like he plans on leaving in a hurry. OK, let's see if all the sweating I'm doing in this thing has been worth it.”

“ _Diverting power to heating elements.”_

A faint hum shudders through the armour. Tony spreads his hands and presses them flat against the ice. The effect is instant. Soon water is cascading down and Tony presses forward until he's melting an Iron Man-shaped tunnel into the wall.

It takes him about a minute to get to the other side. He breaks through all at once and steps into a room high enough to have gantries crossing it a couple of stories up and long enough to be measured in significant fractions of a football field.

There is really only one thing in the room. In pretty much the centre stands a tall tube surrounded by a tangle of pipes and machinery. One section of the tube is transparent. Inside is a woman, floating in some kind of liquid. Her hair and hospital gown billow out around her. She looks pale and unearthly and – well, dead as disco.

Victor Fries is standing beside the tube. He turns from the console he's studying and this time, Tony can see inside the helmet. The mist has cleared in there – and given the temperature in the room is so low, that's pretty suggestive – and behind the visor is the same face that was in Hammer's files. Only – it's a lot . . . bluer than it was in the photo.

Thick red lenses slide over Fries' eyes. “You should not have followed me.” His voice comes out heavily filtered, a monotone buzz.

Tony snaps into a firing pose. “Maybe next time, don't leave such an obvious trail.”

But the sight of the tube and its occupant make him hesitate and Fries fires first. Tony dodges on thrusters. The spray clips him, hissing against the heat shield. It works, just about, reducing the effect of the freeze gun to a thin layer of frost that quickly melts away. Not wanting to push his luck, he shoots back, two quick repulsor blasts that slam into Fries and stagger him. Slightly.

“ _Sir, with the armour's power channelled to the heaters, it will not be possible to increase weapons yield.”_

“Rapid fire then.” Tony starts peppering Fries with shot after shot.

That drives him back a little, back against the machinery. Sparks dance off the tube's housing.

“No!” Fries blasts Tony full in the face, forcing him to break off his attack. “Stay back. This does not concern you.”

“Really? Tell that to all the people you froze so you could steal a corpse!”

“ _Sir. The readings from the device indicate that the occupant is still alive.”_

“Wait, what?”

That moment of distraction costs Tony his balance and he goes down hard, skidding along the floor on a trail of melt-water.

“She is _not_ a corpse, you ignorant fool.” Fries shifts aim, sweeping the spray to create another wall of ice.

“She's in cryonic suspension? Should have seen that coming,” Tony mutters under his breath. He surges to his feet and slams into the new barrier, beating it until it cracks. “So this is a kidnapping? Your weapons project blew up in your face and now you want payback any way you can get it?” The ice shatters and he snaps off a shot that catches Fries on the helmet.

Crying out, the big guy clutches at his head. Tony advances on him, all at once very angry. “Do you even know why she's in there? If this is some kind of medical equipment – damnit, that kind of technology could save lives and you're using it as a weapon–”

“She’s my wife!”

The sudden fear and pain in Fries' voice hits Tony like another freezing blast. His body locks up and all he can do is stare at the man backing protectively up against the tube, at the frail woman floating inside.

Slowly, Tony lowers his hands. “OK. OK . . . I’m listening.”

  
  


* * *

 

Eddie sits heavily and the Batman sinks after him, going into a crouch that looks supremely uncomfortable but stops him from looming over Eddie.

Eddie scrubs his hands over his face up into his hair and wonders if he's hallucinating. He hasn't before, he's _sure_ he hasn't before but he can't remember exactly when he last slept and –

He looks at Br – at the Batman. It's a little easier to process if Eddie thinks of him as the Batman.

He tries to imagine telling the GCPD about this. He tries to imagine telling Hammer. And Eddie isn't sure they'd believe him at all but then they don't _have_ to believe him. He could ruin every person in the room if he walked out now. If he wanted to.

That doesn't make him feel powerful. It makes him feel sick.

“If you want to leave you can," the Batman says, his voice still low and eerie, "I'll show you the way back up to the street.”

Are they that confident that he won't tell anyone? Or is it that they think no one would believe someone like _Eddie?_

Looking down at the Batman . . . Eddie isn't sure that's it at all.

He’d asked for trust. Apparently he has it. The sensible thing to do would be to stop and consider what –

But Eddie isn't always that good at taking the time to think things through and his mouth is opening before he's sure he wants it to –

“His name was Fries," Eddie murmurs, "It was – something with a V –Vincent or Virgil or something –”

He's not sure why he's telling them. He's not sure it will –

And really why should he trust _Bruce Wayne_ any more than the GCPD?

Eddie looks down. The Batman is staring at him as though what Eddie has to say is the most important thing he'll hear all year. Focused in a way that's almost as frightening as facing Hammer's goons with a piece of wood must be –

Eddie takes a deep breath and looks away.

“There was a lab accident, something about misuse of equipment and a chemical spillage.” Eddie waves a hand in a way that conveys he didn't pay particular attention to the details. “It was shut down suddenly – Hammer hushed it up.”

  
  


But now that Eddie _thinks_ about it, now that he's seen the blueprints built up into a working prototype it occurs to him that –

“There wasn't any footage –”

The labs, the ones for the important projects, the cutting edge, they always had the best security systems Hammer could buy. There must have been cameras. And yet in all the files, Eddie can't recall seeing a single video.

Which was strange really: Hammer usually had videos of industrial accidents. They were always unclear and from such an angle that it was difficult to really tell whether little things like safety systems were functioning correctly, but they existed. Because inconclusive evidence was far more useful to someone like Hammer than no evidence at all.

The Batman asks when the project began and Eddie can't say for certain. He knows when he found the first files and remembers that there were suddenly so many of them –

He hadn't paid them too much attention. He'd been more interested in dancing around Hammer's lacklustre excuse for a firewall than actually analysing his own results.

Now that he thinks about it . . . that sudden rush of data doesn't seem right. That wasn't how the other projects, even the weapons projects, had gone – R&D produced a steady trickle of results unless Hammer decided to throw more money and manpower at a project but that wasn't what had happened with Blizzard. It had come out of nowhere, like a magic act or a theft.

The Batman's face is as grim-set as his mask. “Tell me about the other projects,” he says quietly.

And Eddie does.

  
  


* * *

 

Ever so cautiously, Fries straightens up. He regards Tony suspiciously for a couple of seconds then half turns to look up at the cryo-machine.

“I was contracted to work on Hammer’s Blizzard weapon,” he says, the monotone reasserting itself, “But Nora was dying. A rare disease. All the treatments had failed. I knew with more time a cure might be found, except . . . there wasn’t any time left. I took the technology I was building for Hammer and converted it into a device to freeze Nora. She could rest safely, the decay halted until it could be reversed.”

Victor touches the tube gently with one massive hand, as if trying to reach in and brush his wife’s cheek. “It was the only way. The only choice.” The hand clenches into a fist. “But Hammer discovered what I was doing. He brought his thugs into my lab to stop me. I tried to explain but he wouldn’t listen and . . . there was a confrontation. I barely remember what happened. A gun went off and I was . . . one of the cryo-engines exploded. I was caught in the blast. It changed me. I survived when they thought me killed and I . . . found a way to live on.” Turning, he takes a step towards Tony. “I saw them take Nora away and the thought of what they were doing to her has tormented me every day since.”

The last piece drops into place with a thud in Tony’s mind. “You were looking for her. All those attacks – it was never about what was actually going on at those labs – you were just trying to find where they had taken her.”

“I can no longer survive at temperatures above freezing. I will never again be able to touch another human being, or enjoy the simple pleasure of a summer’s day. All I have left – the only thing – is saving Nora.”

“So in the end you just decided it would be quicker to kidnap Hammer and force him to tell you where he’d put her.”

Victor draws himself up, red goggles glowing fiercely. “Is there no one in your life for whom you would do _anything_ , Iron Man? No one who means so much that you would do whatever it took to keep them safe?”

“Not sure there is,” Tony admits softly. He triggers the faceplate release. The air in the lab is cold and wet on his face. Almost immediately, condensation prickles his beard. “But,” he continues, “that doesn’t mean I don’t understand. You’re willing to do anything to save her? OK. Let me help.”

“Help?” Victor repeats, uncomprehending.

“Yeah. Look, you did what you set out to do. She’s still alive in there. You gave her a fighting chance. And now I can help you make good on that. We can get her back to Stark Medical and I can get my best people on the case. What you achieved in your spare time at HammerTech – that could change the world! It won’t be just her you've saved but hundreds of other people. I can help you finish what you started.”

He’s getting through. He can see it on Victor’s face, even behind the visor. “You would do that? Even after everything that I’ve done? Why should I trust you?”

“Whatever you’ve done, your wife's innocent. If you’re willing to stand down, I promise you that I’ll get Nora out of here and –”

“That’s not your promise to make, Stark!”

With the worst possible timing, Hammer strides out on to the gantry overlooking the lab, a dozen armed security guards pouring in after him. They’ve got their weapons levelled at Victor, big blocky guns that Tony doesn’t want to see in action. Hammer looks down at him, lip curling, all trace of civility gone. “This lab and everything in it are HammerTech property. You have no right to –”

“Hammer!” Victor’s furious shout makes his voicoder howl with static. The freeze gun swings up, pointed square at Justin. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done!”

Tony exhales, breath misting in the air. He lowers his faceplate and seals the suit up again. His repulsors hum back into life and he too takes aim.

At the gantry and Hammer’s goons.

“Stark?!” Justin splutters, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Suggesting that you and your rent-a-cops stay the hell back and don’t shoot the defenceless woman you’ve been keeping prisoner in your secret lab.”

“How dare – Nora Fries has received the very best of care! We’ve kept her stable in here after that lunatic down there decided to turn her into so much frozen meat!”

Mr Freeze gives a wordless growl and Tony can practically hear his finger tightening on the trigger.

“Victor! Stand down.” He turns his head slightly. “Please. If you really are doing this for Nora, let me deal with this.”

“Tony.” Hammer tries to sound imploring. “Think about what you’re doing! This man has left a trail of terror across the city! Do you really want to protect him?”

“Maybe not but if the only other choice is protecting the guy who didn’t try to get any real help for Nora because he was afraid of losing the monopoly on cryo-stasis tech he doesn’t even understand . . . “

“You’re defending a criminal!”

Tony fixes Hammer with a glowing-eye-slot glare. “Yeah, I’m doing that a lot today.”

For a second, no one moves. Then Victor lowers his gun. “If you are really going to help Nora,” he tells Tony, “I’ll do whatever you say. But if you don’t, there won’t be a suit of armour you can build that will protect you.”

“Noted.” With rapid eye movements, Tony paints target-locks on the guards’ guns. He opens the micro-missile racks on his shoulders but does not fire, just lets them get a good look at the payload. “So here’s what’s going to happen. You guys are going to walk out of here and take your expensive-looking popguns with you. Then I’m going to call in a team of specialists who’ll help Victor here prepare Nora for safe transport. After that, we can all go on our way and no one needs to start saying things like ‘illegal imprisonment’ and ‘withholding vital medical care’. Option two involves a lot more exploding weaponry and human rights lawyers. If it helps you make up your mind, I pinged the GCPD when I got here. That sounds like them now.”

And indeed, there are the sirens echoing through the gaping holes Victor made when he came in. Justin goes an interesting colour, somewhere between beetroot and sepsis. His eye is twitching. He jerks a hand up. “Go,” he orders hoarsely. The security guards exchange glances, uncertain. “Go!”

The goons hesitate but one by one, they troop out, leaving Hammer standing up there alone. He looks death at Tony and Victor. “Everything in this laboratory is HammerTech property,” he grates hoarsely, “If you even _think_ about commercialising the cryonic technology, I will tie you up in lawsuits until the day you die.” Whirling on his heel, he stalks away, the machine-gun beat of his shoes ringing on the gantry.

When he’s gone, Tony opens his helmet again and turns to Victor. “Thank you.”

“For not killing him?”

“That and not killing me.”

Victor angles his head contemplatively. Then he reaches over and unplugs the cables connecting the freeze gun to his suit.

He hands the gun to Tony. “I will need to go to prison, I assume.”

“You did hire a bunch of guys with guns to go on a rampage with you across the city that got a lot of people hurt. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure wherever you end up has the technology it needs to keep you comfortable.”

“And Nora?”

“I meant what I said, Victor. She’ll get the best of care. I promise.”

He nods tiredly, slumping a little inside his suit. “I will check the equipment. I need to be sure that Hammer hasn’t done any damage.”

“Of course.” Tony looks over his shoulder, listening to the sounds of the cops running towards them. “Take all the time you need.”

  
  


* * *

 

It sinks in _afterwards_ , when he's finished pulling every last scrap of information about Hammer out of his head like so many teeth. After the energy that's kept him up and focused for days finally fizzes away.

At some point someone turned off the spotlights. The subway station really is _laughably_ ill-equipped for what they're planning to do –

Some of them leave. Eddie doesn't quite keep track of that. He's reached some sort of limit: you can't feel brilliant when you're this tired.

His head's full of white noise. An old man (Eddie doesn't catch his name) hands him a mug and Eddie takes it automatically.

He can't tune everything out and drink the tea. He can't pay attention to the news report blaring from a nearby screen (something about Stark?)

There's a board against the wall covered in papers. He can't focus enough to actually read any of them properly but his eyes keep skipping over them. A photo here (and he recognises that face –), an article on chemical analysis there (isn't that –?), an autopsy report (the words 'smoke inhalation' jump out) and oh –

Oh.

Eddie sits down again heavily.

He stares at the board.

“Mr Nashton?”

It's Bruce Wayne. The Batman. He's still wearing the costume and Eddie thinks that by rights, it _should_ look ridiculous this close. Instead it looks practical and strangely military.

“Are you all right?” Mr Wayn – _the Batman –_ Bruce – asks and –

“They were going to kill me.”

There, he's said it. It's written out on the board, though not in so many words. It's in the autopsies of his ex-colleagues.

He looks up and finds himself catching Bruce Wayne's eyes. And perhaps it's just the costume, with the mask spilled over his back like a hood, but he doesn't look anything like his pictures any more.

“Yes,” Bruce says finally, “At least, we assumed so.”

He turns to look at the board. Eddie would like to do the same but his eyes have gotten caught on the Batman's cowl and they don't seem to be going any where else.

He swallows. “When you came to my door –”

Eddie trails off. He's not sure how to put all the ideas buzzing round his head into words –

“Hammer had seven people killed in arson attacks this month,” Wayne says, looking at Eddie again, “You fit the profile of the other victims. That's why we were watching you –”

He stops when Eddie waves his free hand, cutting in and –

The news keeps showing footage of the Iron Man shooting out of a building in the most expensive district in town and planting himself on the sidewalk in front of Fries.

To protect _Hammer_.  
  


The world's only superhero, a beacon of progress and humanity, seems a million miles away from the dark, gloomy Gotham of the docks. He probably didn't even notice the fires –

But in this grimy little rat-hole, they _did_.

Eddie doesn't have a way of saying that no one has tried to keep him safe before. That if he had burned in that basement the only people who would have cared are Hammer –

And the Batman.

It's ridiculous. Two men and a handful of adolescents, operating out of a bricked-up subway station that could be raided at any minute. There's no Stark technology here – they are hopelessly, _hilariously_ out gunned and yet –

In the end, Eddie says, “I want to help.”

Wayne looks at him and Eddie sets his jaw and glares back.

The Batman nods and Eddie pretends he doesn't want to let out a sigh of relief.

“I'll have Tim bring your things down in the morning.” He pauses. “We'll need to get you –”

“Some form of counterfeit identification? An alias? A pseudonym as it were?” Eddie grins, bright and sharp. “Oh don't worry. I have something in mind.”

  
  


* * *

 

It takes all night to get Nora out of there.

At some point, Tony loses track of how long he's spent in the cryo-lab, pouring over readouts and doing heavy lifting for his team. When he finally steps out into the fresh air – freshish air; it is Gotham after all – the sun is coming up.

Someone hands him a paper cup of glorious delicious coffee. Or at least, coffee. It tastes about as good as you'd expect day-break, street-side coffee to taste. He gulps it down anyway. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” Jim says, cradling a cup of his own, “Hell of a night.”

Across the forecourt, GCPD officers are escorting Victor Fries to a waiting police wagon. He goes without any complaint, meekly obeying instructions as if he weren't wearing a giant suit of powered armour.

“You really think he's not going to be trouble?”

Tony shrugs. “He only wanted to help his wife. That's what all this was about.”

“Most people take out loans they can’t afford to cover health-care. They don’t . . .” Jim gestures at the wreckage around them.

“True, but most people don’t nearly die in weird lab accidents that turn them into sub-zero life-forms and then find out that their cryonically-suspended wife has been hidden away by their former employer. Speaking of which, please tell me that you’re going to charge Hammer with kidnap or false imprisonment or – _something_ over all this!”

“Hammer’s lawyers already got a five-hundred page statement on the DA’s desk full of a lot of claims about necessary care, the need for confidentiality and generally making out that they were doing Nora Fries a favour keeping her in there. We're still working through it.”

Jim doesn't sound hopeful and Tony wonders if it would help to turn over the files he borrowed from Hammer. No, probably not. It wasn't as if you could arrest an arms manufacturer for making arms. Maybe for accidentally creating a super-villain instead . . .

“In any case,” the commissioner adds, “Fries didn't do _his_ case much good going after Hammer like he did. He might get some sympathy, doing it for his wife, but there's a hell of a lot Hammer can go after him for. If you're wanting to look after the guy . . .”

“Yeah, yeah . . .” The coffee goes sour in Tony's mouth and he decides he doesn't feel like drinking any more. He tips the rest over the concrete and crunches the cup flat.

He watches the police wagon drive away and his mind turns to the prison he's going to have to build for Victor. He's going to need a look at the cryo-suit tech. At Nora's tube too, obviously. And he's got a suit of his own to rebuild, plus JARVIS informs him that Justin's lawyers are suing over the hole in the conference centre roof. Because that's gratitude for you.

“Right, I should be getting back to headquarters.” Jim offers his free hand. “You did good work here, Iron Man.”

They shake and Tony manages a smirk. “My bill's in the mail. Stay frosty, Jim.”

His helmet snaps back on and he powers up his jets. “Let's go home, JARVIS.”

“ _Course already plotted, sir.”_

  
  


* * *

 

“Your incompetence is going to cost you dearly,” Hammer's voice is a barely contained growl of fury. He's snarling into his phone as he strides towards his office, every step sounding loudly against the polished floor. “You had better pray that it does not end up costing me as well.”

Ending the call then and there, Hammer throws open the office door. If he limits his contact with Firebrand, he will be less tempted to trigger the fail-safe built into the hapless half-wit's suit and incinerate the fool where he stands. Hammer is willing to admit that Gary Gilbert has been extremely useful in the past; however that will in no way insulate him from retribution if his failure to eliminate Nashton results in –

“What are you doing here?” Hammer blurts the question out, unable to catch his tongue in time.

The current occupant of his chair does not deign to reply, merely gestures for him to enter. It is not imperious per se but neither is it a request.

Since the alternative is standing awkwardly in his own doorway, Hammer does as he is bid. He point blank refuses to take a seat in front of the desk, so he strolls instead to one of the high windows and stares out at the anthill that is Gotham with an appropriate degree of aloofness.

A long silence fills the room behind him. The kind that begs to be filled. “This is not a disaster,” he says, unable to keep from speaking, “Losing the cryo-tube is annoying but it is not full exposure. And Victor Fries has fairly conclusively discredited himself. The authorities will not have any grounds for moving against us.” _Against me_ would have been the more accurate statement, of course, but it paid to remind one's collaborators that they were all in it together. “More importantly, I have people working to retrieve Fries' suit and weapon, It will be simple enough to argue that they are rightly HammerTech property, and then we will finally have a working prototype.”

“Finally.”

The edge to the repetition is unmistakable, no matter how mild and neutral the tone. Hammer bristles at the unspoken accusation. “If Fries hadn’t had a nervous breakdown over his damn wife, we would have had it years ago! Blizzard would have been a complete success – a functional, mass-producible weapon capable of stopping even the 'invincible' Iron Man dead in his tracks!”

“Your mistake, Hammer, was underestimating what a man would do for love.”

He accepts the admonishment because he doesn't really have a choice. Inside, he seethes quietly. His silent partner's superior attitude always grates but right now, it is utterly insufferable.

Hammer turns from the window. “Is there something specific I can do for you? Because if you don't mind getting to the point, I would appreciate you doing so. I have things that need my attention sooner rather than later.”

One long finger caresses the side of the ornamental blotter Hammer keeps on his desk. “Such as?”

“For a start, I need to institute immediate disciplinary measures against the menial who allowed Stark to get access to the special project files.”

“Indeed?”

“I _know_ Stark accessed a terminal and it's obvious that he had foreknowledge of Victor Fries' identity –”

The hand rises again, cutting him off. Light glitters in the jewel of a heavy ring. “Do not waste your efforts. I ordered such information released should Tony Stark ever discover the site at which you were holding Nora Fries.”

“You – you did _what_?! You had – one of your agents was working at that facility and you had them – _you gave my files to Stark?!_ ”

“I allowed him to access them, should he pay sufficient attention to his surroundings.”

“YOU GAVE STARK ACCESS TO MY FILES?!”

“Your panic is unnecessary. There is little there that can incriminate you further than your inability to handle Fries has already done so – even if Stark could use the information he retrieved against you, which he cannot since he gained it illegally. And if you are worried that this will somehow give him an advantage on the corporate battlefield, then I would remind you that your innovations are as a candle to the sun in comparison to the things Stark has achieved in his life-time.”

Hammer can feel his jaw twitching with suppressed anger. The worst of it is, he knows he is angry at the truth. “Tony Stark will _never_ make you the weapons you want.”

There is silence for a long, drawn out moment.

“What you fail to understand, Hammer – what you have always failed to understand – is that the world is not changed by weapons alone. There will always be a need for ploughshares when the work of the swords is done. My plans have always extended beyond what I have asked of you. Do not presume that will ever change.”

The man sitting at Hammer's desk pushes his chair back and stands up. “Concern yourself with improving your own poor performance,” he says coolly, “My interest in Tony Stark is my business and I will pursue it in the manner I deem fit.”

He leaves a pause there, allowing – demanding – that Hammer respond. Hammer cannot bring himself to say a word and so he jerks his head in an acknowledgement just shy of being an actual nod.

“I shall leave you to your work. Keep me informed as to the progress of the Blizzard Project. I expect rapid results.”

With that, the interview is apparently over. Without another word, Hammer is left alone in his office. He adjusts his tie, wincing at how tight it now feels. He walks cautiously to his desk and sits down gingerly. The chair is custom made, a masterpiece of polished metal and soft leather. It is meant to convey power to the observer and supreme luxury to the occupant and right now, it is as uncomfortable as a bed of nails.

Hammer is sitting at the heart of his empire, surrounded by the trappings of his wealth and success. This is his sanctum, his throne room, the wheelhouse from which he steers the future of not just HammerTech but America, even the world itself.

He has never in his life felt so helpless.


End file.
